Football has been good to the Torres family

MEXICO CITY — Four-down football gave Gabriel Torres a life of riches; a university education funded by scholarships, an engineering career, a happy marriage to the woman he met at school, long and cherished friendships with former teammates, a handsome family of three boys who love the sport.

The game has been so good to the Torres clan, a true football family, that they would never complain. But circumstances robbed Gabriel of a place to play once he had finished tearing up opposing defences as a star running back for Universidad de las Americas Pueblas (UDLAP) in Puebla, 130 kilometres southeast of here.

“It was only a dream to go outside (Mexico) to play professional football,” he said.

The country’s only professional loop, the eight-team Liga de Futbol Americano Profesional, didn’t exist back then. He wasn’t National Football League good, and the Canadian Football League wasn’t on his radar.

But Gabriel’s middle son Diego has a great chance to play professional ball, and the whole family is thrilled with the prospect. The strapping 23-year-old linebacker, who followed in his father’s footsteps to UDLAP, will be eligible for the 2020 LFA draft. Thanks to the partnership forged between the LFA and the CFL, Diego is looking beyond his own borders. He has his eyes on Canada.

“I want my football career to go farther after university. I wasn’t really interested in the LFA. It’s a really young league,” Diego said Saturday. “Right now, because of all they are doing with the CFL, there’s more interest in it. It’s a job opportunity, to go play in Canada.

“You know it’s really hard to get to the NFL. I mean, obviously, it’s the ultimate goal. It’s like a dream. It’s another level. And all the history they have. It’s just really good football.

“But since I started learning about the CFL, I am starting to like it a lot because of the rule changes. It’s appealing. My thought after I finish university is to go to Canada to play there. Right now, because of the LFA and CFL agreement, it seems more real and more near.”

Diego won’t participate in the CFL combine and player draft here this weekend. He is concentrating on finishing up a Masters in psychology, with plans to graduate in December. He will also play out his seventh and final season at UDLAP. Thankfully, it won’t likely be his final year in the game.

“I know it’s my last year at university and I want to do really well but all the feelings of nostalgia, they are not there yet.”

In time he may reflect on all that he too has gotten from the game, including the championship win in 2016, beating the Tigres in Monterrey in front of 12,000 lusty hometown fans. The win, which remains his career highlight, came 25 years after his father won the national title with UDLAP in 1991.

His father’s career was a contributing factor when Diego started playing at age 10, after first experimenting with soccer and basketball. In four-down football, he found his game and in linebacker his position. He loves the versatility and the physical demands on his body. And he likes to hit people.

His father and mother Carla let all three of their boys grow into the sport, whatever sport it was at the time.

“Obviously (his father’s career) was an influence, but my dad and my mother always supported me in every sport we played, my brothers and I.”

Gabriel, who played both soccer and football in school in Guadalajara where he grew up, had only one stipulation to his sons, that they commit themselves to whatever they chose.

“It was never mandatory that they play football. But suddenly, they started to play and it was wonderful,” he said.

The game’s roots run deep through the Torres family. Carla, a huge fan of the National Football League, loves the sport at all levels, in part because of its impact on the lives of her sons.

“Football is the sport that is like life,” she said. “You have to be really disciplined and it is all about teamwork.

“I think it’s very important to our family because it has been the centre of many of our activities,” she said. “Fernando the oldest played, Diego plays, and Rodrigo, the little one, he used to play. Right now in college, it is all football. Every Saturday we get with friends and come to Mexico (City) or we go to Monterrey or we go to Guadalajara. And my parents come with us, so it all goes around football. When they were kids, all summer we were following them (to games) and we really enjoyed it.”

Neither Fernando nor Rodrigo plays any longer, so the family’s last connection will be through Diego. If he winds up in the CFL one day soon, they would be able to visit Gabriel’s brother and family in Toronto.

They are proud of their family’s history in the game, proud too of the strides the game has made in Mexico. And Diego would be happy to tell Canadians all about it if they have doubts that the CFL should be in Mexico looking for players and nurturing this partnership with the LFA.

“I would just tell them to watch Mexican football and be open to everything you see. It is really different than what you see in the NFL or in college football in the U.S and it’s probably really different than what you see in Canadian college or the CFL.

“But we definitely have a really good level and a lot of talent here in Mexico and I think it should be seen.”